


Freedom At Last

by nerddowell



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tangled (2010) Fusion, Based on a Tumblr Post, Canon Era, Disney, Flynn Rider!Chevalier, Gen, Rapunzel!Philippe, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 12:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11357487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: ‘When the baby is born,’ the Queen said, ‘we shall take him away, far from his brother and the court, where nobody will find him. Only we will be allowed to see him. He can never be allowed out into the world where he could garner support and move against Louis. Our son was born to reign. He is the sun to light the kingdom. All this child is is a dark cloud, looming over him, threatening to overcast.’





	Freedom At Last

**Author's Note:**

> **  
> _High in her tower,_  
>  **   
>  **  
> _She sits by the hour,_  
>  **   
>  **  
> _Maintaining her hair._  
>  **   
>  **  
> _Blithe and becoming and frequently humming_  
>  **   
>  **  
> _A lighthearted air_  
>  **
> 
>  
> 
> I blame this on a) that one tumblr post and b) me watching _Into The Woods_ recently with my boyfriend just to show him the _Agony_ scene.

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not so very far away, a King and Queen lived in a beautiful palace, filled with beautiful people in all the highest fashions of the day, throwing parties every night to celebrate their kingdom’s peace and good fortune. Their kingdom was rich, with bountiful harvests every year, and the King and Queen were well-loved by their people. The King and Queen also had a son, a _Dauphin_ in their parlance, and he was a beautiful little boy with curling dark hair and blue eyes whom they had named Louis. They had been trying for a great many years before Louis had been given to them, and it seemed to the King and Queen as if he had been plucked from the heavens just for them. He was a child of the sun, they said, God-given; _Louis Dieu-donné_ , all the courtiers called him, and they loved him best of any child there ever was.

The Queen was expecting another child also, and was nearing her time when our story begins. The kingdom longed for this awaited child despite their adoration of little Louis, as they knew no throne could be stable with all of its fortunes resting on the shoulders of one small boy. But the King and Queen were afraid of the new baby and the potential it would have, should it be born another son, to overcast their firstborn’s right to his father’s throne. For this reason, they hoped for a girl, who could never hope to rule and would have no power to usurp her brother. Not long after the King’s own rule began, his own brother, the wicked Duc d’Orléans, had attempted to overthrow him and steal the crown. The king had him thrown down and imprisoned for treason, and abolished the title, believing the house of Orléans to be cursed as traitors and rebels. The new baby would not be allowed to inherit the title, in case the curse should come back to haunt Louis after the King was dead.

And so, as the Queen’s confinement grew ever closer, she and the King made a promise in the dead of the night:

‘When the baby is born,’ the Queen said, ‘we shall take him away, far from his brother and the court, where nobody will find him. Only we will be allowed to see him. He can never be allowed out into the world where he could garner support and move against Louis. Our son was born to reign. He is the sun to light the kingdom. All this child is is a dark cloud, looming over him, threatening to overcast.’

The King agreed, and the pact was made. The new baby, if God saw fit, would be a girl, and no threat; if not, it would be a second son, feared more than he was loved. It would be a lonely existence for a child, but their fear for Louis was so great that they felt no more than the barest pang of conscience as they made their plans for the child’s arrival.

When the Queen entered her birthing chamber a moon’s turn later, the palace put about the message that the child, a boy, had been born sickly, weak, unlikely to live. The kingdom mourned for the little prince, believing him all but dead already, and when the Queen was strong enough, she rode out under cover of night to the countryside where an abandoned tower was screened from view by high cliffs, and trees hanging with creeping vines obscured the arch of the glade’s entrance. She took the baby up to the very highest room and left him there, in a small oak crib, with only a nursemaid and his swaddling blanket.

* * *

As soon as the baby, named Philippe, grew old enough to care for himself without the need for a nursemaid, the woman was taken from her small room at the bottom of the tower and given to M. Marchal, after which no one knows what happened to her besides he and the Queen, and both kept their silence. Philippe wept for many days, calling for his nursemaid from his tower room. The only answers he received were birdsong, and although he asked his mother whenever she came to visit him for a long time afterwards, she would always look away and change the topic.

One year, as he was reaching his fifth birthday, she brought him a present, a small horse carved from wood with a rider astride it, to go with the castle he had made himself out of piled up trunks and boxes and imagination. He was a sweet child, with a great knack for fancy and living his life with his head in the clouds, reminding her of Louis at a young age. However, Louis remained back at the castle, completely ignorant of his younger brother in the tower; he was too busy playing with the other children around the castle, kitchen boys and gardeners’ aides with their grubby faces and mud-stained knees. Philippe had only his wooden knight and the birds that roosted in the rafters for company.

Night had fallen, and Philippe’s tower room was lit only by the stars through the window and candles, burning low in their holders. The Queen sat Philippe down on a chair beside the fireplace – little used, for it was summer now and there was no need for the extra warmth, even at night – and leant him back against her knees, combing his long dark hair out over her lap. It reached the boy’s waist by now, and in the next year, it would reach his toes. The strands were gossamer-fine in her hands, like spun night, much darker than Louis’ still honey-brown tones, and his voice was high and clear in her ears as he chattered away as children do.

‘I have been learning, mother,’ he said, holding out a book full of nursery tales, ‘all about the world as it used to be. With dragons, and sorcery, and swashbuckling pirates–’

She smiled indulgently at him, winding a loose midnight ringlet around one finger and watching his bright blue eyes alight with mischief. He was so like his brother there, always looking for the next game, the next distraction from his lessons. Louis would become a great king, she was sure, a thoughtful and wise ruler, and this fanciful little sprite with his dancing eyes and dancing feet would be no threat whatsoever. Perhaps it would not have been so dangerous to keep Philippe at the palace – but no. She must think of Louis, of the legacy he would bring to their kingdom as the Sun Prince who would be Sun King, and despite Philippe’s captive hold on her heart during the night, it would be his brother who would keep her days.

Philippe was a surpassing fair child, however, with his long eyelashes and rosebud mouth, and that beautiful curling hair hanging to his waist, held back by ribbons when he was at play. He would need new clothes soon, and one of the women at court had had a death in her family, a daughter of similar age to Philippe, and of similar size. The Queen thought about having the little girl she had longed for, and decided that instead of cutting Philippe’s hair, as would be right for a young man of five, she would leave it long, would encourage him to wear dresses and occupy himself in the womanly pursuits, and that way – even if the unthinkable happened and he was discovered as the ‘dead’ Prince – nobody would take a man in a dress seriously, and Louis’ reign would be secure.

* * *

And so Philippe grew older, and took to wearing his hair in a braid so that it wouldn’t trail along behind him, sweeping the floor of dust and grime which would take hours to brush out. Whenever his mother came to visit, she would call to him from the ground outside and he would stand by the window and lower his hair down so that she could climb up the outside of the tower to come in through the window. As she grew older, it taxed her more and more to haul herself up, so he took to looping his hair over a sturdy rafter in the overhanging roof and pulling her up himself, his arms strong where hers were weak.

At fifteen, he retained a little of the childish baby fat around his jaw, but he had grown into a beautiful young man, his eyes ice-blue and his body lithe and leanly powerful in the long gowns he wore. He had taken to painting his face like a real court woman, with silver pots of rouge and powder she had brought him over the years. They rested on the main table beneath the loft which held his bed and a small chest of drawers full of clothes, and he had a small handheld mirror which he used to see his reflection as he made up his face in the morning. Tonight he was clothed in lilac, which suited his alabaster skin perfectly, and his lips and cheeks were rouged and flushed with pleasure as he flung his arms around his mother and beamed.

‘Mother!’ he greeted her, dragging her to the chair at the fireplace and fetching an extra pillow, ‘I had something to ask you!’ His liveliness was a cover for nerves, she knew, and her eyes narrowed. Philippe sat demurely at her feet, smoothing his skirts with his hands before gazing up at her with hopeful eyes. He had never lost that exquisitely innocent expression, she thought to herself, and reached out to smooth his hair with her wrinkled palm.

‘I was wondering, mother, if you wouldn’t–’

‘Philippe, _mon cher_ , won’t you sit for me and let me dress your hair? You do it so untidily, this peasant’s knot you’ve got at the back of your head. You’re a beautiful girl, you should show it.’ She leaned forward to pull him down to sit, settling herself down to unpick the untidy braid full of snarls and tangles. He winced a few times as she fought with particularly stubborn knots, but soon there was a smooth, sparkling waterfall of dark hair over her knees. It was now so long that, as well as being able to be lowered far enough for her to be lifted up the side of the tower, he could have wound it three times around the circumference of the whole room. He sat quietly whilst she combed through it, but his shoulders were tense and she could feel him vibrating with anticipation. Finally he just burst out:

‘Mother, can I not go outside? For my birthday. Just one day, one day out in the world to see what it’s like. I want to know how the grass feels for myself, not just read about it in books. I want to see the sea, or a city!’ He grabbed her hands in his eagerly, his eyes beseeching. ‘Anything that’s not the inside of this tower. Please, mother, I’m nearly sixteen. Can I not go outside, just once?’

‘Philippe, my love,’ his mother said sadly, pulling her hand away to cup his cheek, ‘the world out there is not safe for you. There are illnesses that I’ve seen lay waste to whole cities, floods that wash villages away, storms that break down castle walls, and that’s to say nothing of the people. Criminals would take one look at your pretty face and do terrible things to you, and I might never see you again. You’re safe here, away from all of that. Don’t you have everything you need here?’ She gestured around her to his small oven, his bed, his mountains of books littered in piles all over the floor. ‘Stay here, darling.’

‘Mother, I know you believe the world to be full of horrible things,’ Philippe said pleadingly, his eyes fixed on hers, ‘but… don’t you survive it every day? You come to me at night, but by morning you’re gone, back out there, and if you’ve lived there for so long, why can’t I? Even just for a day?’

‘This conversation is over, Philippe,’ his mother snapped, her hand tightening around a lock of hair, and he cried out sharply. ‘You’re not to leave this tower. Ever!’

* * *

And so Philippe remained in that circular room for years to come, too afraid of another argument – so easily started with his mother now, in her old age. He would sit on the windowsill to wait for her, brushing his hair, and sing to himself melodies of his own devising, daydreaming about how the world outside of his tower would feel on his skin – the real breeze of a wind over his shoulders, or the soft warmth of grass between his toes (he was basing this on the shaggy woollen rug in his room).

Losing himself in his imagination was all he could do, locked up as he was. Despite the piles and piles of books, by the time he reached his eighteenth birthday, he had read all of them a hundred times or more, so often that he could recite them in his sleep. And although he loved to dance, it was very difficult without a partner or music, which unfortunately – apart from his singing – he had never been very skilled at. All in all, there were very few things other than gazing out at the world and wishing to amuse himself with, and so that was how he spent his long, lonely days at the top of the tower.

However, even these innocent pastimes were wrought with danger: when his mother came to visit him and caught him sat there on the ledge, singing, she boxed his ears, her fury so intense it was frightening.

‘You foolish girl!’ she scolded. ‘Don’t you know you could be heard for miles around? You could have been seen!’ She slapped his cheek to redness, then smoothed the sting away with a gentle thumb, her voice softening. ‘You must obey me, Philippe. A beauty like you cannot be let free in the world. There are too many who would do you harm, and for no reason at all beyond the sheer whim. Here, you are protected, you are loved… You are safe. Don’t you know what they do to strangers down there? You would not be welcome among them.’

He blinked at her, his brows knitted over clear blue eyes. The thought had never even occurred to him, although spending a little time pondering it, he realised she was probably right. Strangers in his books tended to be shunned, or worse, attacked for their differences. And he was too naïve, having spent his whole life locked in his tower, not knowing a thing about the world. He would be mocked for sure. That rankled with him, an affront to his pride, and he bit his lip, having second thoughts about what he had asked for.

‘Surely if I could only go down once,’ he argued softly, ‘surely if I could only see them, and learn a little more about them… I would stay by your side, I swear it.’ As she swelled again with anger like an arthritic bullfrog, he sensed the danger and quickly changed tack. ‘Mother, why must I hide? You are the only one who comes to visit me. I’ve never seen another person except yourself.’ He pressed her hands between his own. ‘What harm am I doing, sitting on the windowsill to look out?’

She ignored his questions. ‘You’re never to sit on the window ledge again, and you must stop singing during the day,’ his mother told him firmly, wrapping her hand around his hair and tugging hard to make sure she had his attention. ‘I may not catch you at it, but if I hear your voice, I shall do worse next time than simply box your ears.’ She let his hair go, and he smoothed his fingers through it anxiously, submissively, staring at the floor. ‘Promise me, Philippe.’

‘I promise,’ he mumbled into his lap, hands fluttering over his hair, knotting it into another untidy braid.

‘Good girl.’ His mother beamed. ‘Now, I have to go away for a few days, as I have important things to do. I will be back in three nights’ time. You won’t miss me too terribly, I hope?’

‘No, mother,’ he said bravely, forcing a smile. ‘I’ll be fine.’

* * *

The first night his mother was away, Philippe heeded her orders, and sat indoors with candles guttering in their holders to watch the night sky appear from behind the clouds. He had star-maps pinned up on every wall and would stare at them for hours, searching out all the different constellations the sky had to offer. When the moon had fully risen, he climbed up to his loft bedroom and went to bed, staring out of the skylight into the soft white light and counting the stars until he felt his eyelids begin to droop and his breathing evened out into slumber.

The second night, he decided to take a risk, and sat out on the windowsill to comb his hair as he hummed and stargazed. Orion was suspended directly above the oak tree that held the squirrels’ nests, and he could hear them chittering to one another as he dragged the comb carefully through his curling tresses. The sound of a branch breaking not far from the tree frightened the squirrels and made Philippe sit up straight, heart pounding. The branches of the lower trees shook, leaves rustling, for a few seconds before, out of the greenery, stepped a young man with golden curling hair and bright blue eyes, brighter than the stars.

He passed the small pond beneath the shade of the trees to stand in the full moonlight directly beneath Philippe’s window, at which point Philippe realised he could be seen and promptly scrambled to get back inside.

‘Don’t!’ the man shouted, holding his hands out in a halting gesture. ‘Please. Don’t go. I had only come to look.’

‘At what?’ Philippe shouted back, half-inside already, and he turned his head to look down at the stranger.

‘Well, you see, they say that a very beautiful and rare type of flower grows here,’ the stranger told him, staring up at him, ‘and I think I might have found it.’

‘What does it look like?’ Philippe asked, slowly turning back around to settle on the window ledge, even going so far as to rest his chin on his hand conversationally as he spoke. The man smiled up at him, his teeth as white as the moonlight and shining under the stars, and tossed his head back. His hair rippled down over his shoulders, and Philippe watched the glinting of the curls like coins for a moment, dumbstruck, before remembering to rein himself in so he didn’t fall from the windowsill.

‘It’s black as midnight,’ the man said, ‘with white petals with blue tips.’

‘I’ve never seen that flower here,’ Philippe argued, his brows knotted. The man just smiled.

‘What’s your name?’

‘I can’t tell you. I’m not supposed to speak to you at all. If my mother knew–’

‘Why, is she here?’

‘No, but if she were–’

‘Well if she’s not here, then you’ve nothing to worry about unless you tell here, which would be rather stupid of you. And I certainly won’t tell her, as I make a habit out of avoiding beautiful girls’ parents for very good reasons.’ He knocked on the tower wall. ‘Won’t you let me up? It’s terribly cold down here, I shall catch a chill.’

‘My mother–’

‘Is not here. My dear, live a little. I am only a man, not a beast of the forest come to ravage you. Let me up, let me partake of your fire, and in the morning I shall be gone. You have my word on it.’

Philippe thought hard for a moment, weighing up the value of the stranger’s company over the explosion of anger it would warrant from his mother. She wouldn’t return for another night, and the stranger had promised to be gone by morning. There would be no reason for her to know, no reason even to suspect, that the man had been here. And yet she could read him like a book; he was sure that there would be some clue, some unintentional giveaway in his face that he had broken the rules, and she would punish him worse than ever before. He hesitated.

Then he threw caution to the wind, and his hair – wound into a rope – out of the window.

* * *

Philippe sat at the man’s feet, gazing up at him in wonder, as the stranger warmed himself by the fire in Philippe’s mother’s rocking chair. He had fine, long-fingered hands as he spread them in front of the flames, his cheeks bronzed and eyes glittering with the flickering, glowing light. Philippe peppered him with questions, wanting to know all about the world outside his tower and where the man had come from. The answer was that he was the brother of a Count, who lived a long way away from even the nearest village, and that he had been sent to the palace as a companion for the Prince Louis. Philippe, who had heard of Louis only from his mother, immediately asked what the prince was like.

‘A terrible bore, honestly,’ the man said. ‘Oh, he loves to hunt and fuck countless beautiful women and drink, but the rest of the time he’s so terribly serious and demands that we all follow his lead. And nowhere near as beautiful as you, poppet.’ He reached out with a charming smile to brush Philippe’s hair behind his ear, exposing his face, and Philippe blushed, flattered. ‘What’s a lovely girl like yourself doing locked up like this? Jealous husband?’

‘I’ve been this way my whole life,’ Philippe told him with an earnest shrug, ‘I’ve never been allowed out. My mother forbade it.’

‘Why on earth would she do something like that?’ the man asked, his brow knitting, and he leant forwards in his chair, elbows on his knees and chin in one hand, to scrutinise Philippe with serious eyes. Calculating, as though wondering if he’d somehow stumbled across a leper or some such undesirable. But Philippe’s skin was clear and flushed rosy with health, his teeth were good, and if anything the situation seemed more as he had guessed previously – an intensely jealous husband wanting to hide his treasure away from prying eyes, or else very strict and likely religious crackpot parents.

‘She says it’s too dangerous. That I could fall ill, or get hurt, or someone could kidnap me, or worse.’ He smoothed his skirts shyly, looking down at his hands. ‘She only says I’m never to leave this tower.’

‘The world is no more dangerous than the inside of your tower,’ the man told him, taking one of Philippe’s hands in his, ‘in fact, less so, I’d wager. Up here, you could go mad with the boredom; I know I would. Or you could fall from the window ledge, if you sit up there as you were earlier. I imagine down on the ground would be much safer. Don’t you think?’

‘I can’t,’ Philippe said, biting his lip, but he glanced over at the window nevertheless, his eyes shining at the thought of the freedom it would bring him to escape. A soft breeze rustled the fire, sending sparks up the chimney, and he glanced away again, suddenly afraid. What if his mother came home early, and found him gone? Worse, what if he left the tower and ran into her? If it was such a small world as she had always said, it was bound to happen, and the punishment he would get didn’t bear thinking about.

‘With a chaperone, you would be quite alright. And you shall be in the safest of hands with me, my dear.’ The man shot him a dazzling smile, teeth gleaming in the firelight, and Philippe didn’t think of the girls in his stories being seduced by the wolf’s gleaming teeth, nor the imps and pixies who led the unwary astray in forests; he thought only of the wind in his hair, of the man’s warm hand in his as he explored the world, and of leaving his tower behind.

‘All right.’ He nodded firmly, chin set in determination. ‘We’ll go. My mother won’t be back until tomorrow night.’

‘Then we shall have a wonderful day of exploring,’ the man said, his smile brilliant, and he led Philippe to the window.

* * *

The first sensation was cool air on the tips of his toes as he lowered himself down the outside of the tower, bare feet in the cool breeze of morning just breaking in the outside world. The trees were rustling slightly in the wind, and it blew up under his skirt to spread it, like the cap of a mushroom or an open umbrella, beneath him, making him laugh. He approached the ground at last, stretching one foot out to feel the grass beneath his toes. It was cool, slightly damp with dew, and tickled at the soles of his feet; he laughed again, dropping nimbly to the floor on both feet, and stood up in complete amazement. He had finally left his tower.

It suddenly seemed so small to his eyes, and he couldn’t believe that he had spent eighteen years holed up in such a tiny, ramshackle prison. It stood only barely taller than the tallest tree in the glade, which the stranger was currently standing under, and Philippe glanced back at the tower, still with the rope of his hair dangling from the rafters, and he called the stranger over.

‘Give me your knife.’

‘Have you grown so sick of me already?’

Philippe simply reached into his belt and drew the knife out himself, pulling the long, knotted rope of hair away from his jaw. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and cut through it with one stroke, shearing off eighteen years’ worth of dead weight and prison shackles in one sweep of the knife. He let the rope drop to the floor, shaking his new, loose curls out, and pushed the short ends behind his ears, marvelling at the sensation of being able to feel the wind on the back of his neck. He’d gone from hair eight times the length of his own body to barely below chin length.

The stranger was staring at him with wide eyes.

‘That felt good,’ Philippe said, and walked straight past the stranger towards the gap in the trees leading to the rest of the waiting world.

‘Well? Are you coming?’

The stranger hurried after him, still staring with an awed expression, and Philippe smiled to himself. Freedom at last.


End file.
